Loving—Then Hating—That Guy

Have you ever found yourself hating the very guy you were obsessed with just a couple weeks before? I have. When I was a teen, the only way I knew to stop liking a guy was to start hating him.

I do not recommend that tactic now, and thankfully God has shown me a better way. But I still occasionally find myself thinking angry thoughts toward guys who let me down. 

In fact, I’ve been noticing it a lot lately. Over the past year, a guy has shown me extra attention with occasional calls, texts, and invites to coffee—with looooong periods of silence in between. It’s felt like one eMoTiOnAl RoLlEr CoAsTeR. And I admit that sometimes I catch myself getting angry at him and having “tell-him-like-it-is conversations” in my head.

 What’s this all about?! How can I go from liking this guy to not minding if I never see him again? I found the answer in the book of James recently: 

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight (James 4:1–2).

According to God’s Word, the issue is that I want something so bad (covet it) that when I don’t get it, I fight, quarrel, and kill (even if just in my thoughts).

So whenever I catch myself doing this, I start praying for this guy. I pray that God will lead him and guide him in his decisions. I pray God will prepare him to love and cherish his future wife. I ask God to prepare me to love one man for life, even when he acts like a pill. Then I start to pray for my friends who are married—that God would help them forgive and love each other well.

Because that’s what God tells us to do. Bring our petitions to Him rather than trying to work things out on our own. Petition Him not for our own pleasure, but for His glory:

You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures (James 4:2–3).

Have you been hating that guy in your life too? If so, I encourage you to pray for him. It’s pretty hard to stay mad at someone you’re asking God to bless!

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